More snow

Snow is falling fast outside my window right now. This has been a very snowy month — the first flakes started piling up on January 31st and we’ve had snow cover ever since. I know that months of snow cover is not unusual for many places, but here in Pennsylvania it tends to come and go. The good news is that it is pretty, and we have four-wheel drive vehicles that can handle the hills. I’m thankful that our power grid is mostly standing up to the onslaught. I’m feeling so awful for families who are without power (and hence heat) due to winter weather around the country right now. After Hurricane Sandy many years ago, we lost power for several days as the temperature dipped into winter weather and it was just miserable with little kids who didn’t understand why they were so cold.

Those particular kids are now older…and all have virtual school today. We have extremely high-capacity internet, but I now know that it can’t handle five people doing Zoom-style video calls, plus a kindergartner playing games on his Kindle (we found it!) while running videos on the computer (don’t judge, I needed quiet), plus two boys with phones multi-tasking some video streaming during school hours (that was cut off when discovered). There were some children who were very excited about me being off my calls so they could get their recreational internet back for between-class breaks.

This is definitely the thick of winter, but I’ve been reminding myself lately that we are almost through the thick of it. February is a short month, so we’re basically into late February right now. For some reason I remember Laura Ingalls in The Long Winter consoling herself that February is a short month and March will be spring. Early March isn’t actually spring (here or in their little town on the prairie) but it’s getting there. On my 10-day weather forecast I can see Saturday the 27th, and the Monday after that is March. There are often some nicer days in the first half of March. I remember last year as we were locking down in early/mid March that there were days up into the 60s, which made it all seem a bit more bearable. At the time. We didn’t know we’d still be in all this a year later…

Anyway, I hope you’re staying warm, wherever you are reading this from. I hope the snow/sleet will stop by mid-afternoon so we can go outside and play. I was shoveling in the thick flakes this morning and wow, nothing like seeing your work disappear right behind you….